To be young is to recognise that this historical moment is special, in that our identity is increasingly celebrated in ways that would have been previously unthinkable. It is also to understand that our increased visibility alone is unlikely to reduce inequities within and between countries or generate a more sustainable world. With this in mind, we still have to go further to improve how LSE co-produces research with colleagues in the global south in ways that do not reproduce existing global inequalities.
To be gifted is to draw from the legacy of Black or otherwise anti-racist scholars, some of whom have already passed through LSE. But it is also to rigorously apply our gifts towards interrogating what increased diversity and inclusivity ought to achieve. Rather than forge a new shade of elites within LSE and beyond, our power should be applied towards building richer conceptions of what people of all different identities, genders, abilities, socio-economic backgrounds and sexual orientations can achieve.
And to be Black, specifically of African American descent, is to understand that we have transformed ourselves despite brutal, frequently institutionalised, disadvantages into intellectual and cultural diamonds. But as a mixed-race person who has also lived and worked in Africa, I have experienced some of the multitudes of Black identities. So, to be Black is to intimately understand every person’s ability to reframe how the world understands them, and how they see themselves, while raising critical questions about why ‘Blackness’ needs to be constructed in the first place.